MarsEdit---Functional Blog Editor for Mac Users Looking for a Live Writer Option

One thing I obviously discovered immediately in my Mac conversion this weekend was my loss of Windows Live Writer, the free blogging software. I used Live Writer quite often, especially when scratching out the earliest drafts of a blog post. What I discovered this weekend is that it isn’t available for Mac and there’s really no equivalent solution available of my MacBook Pro.

I searched the web and stumbled across this article, “A Blogging Tool for the Mac That Is Close to the Windows Live Writer.” It describes an application called MarsEdit, an blog editor for Mac users. I immediately found the application in the App Store, and saw that it wasn’t free; it was $39.99.  After obviously getting Live Writer free all these years, I was reluctant to pay that price. Still, I wanted some kind of blogging software that allowed me to compose blog posts offline. I continued to search, but I found nothing else. Being able to compose blog posts offline is important for me. Many of those posts stay forever doomed to spend their days in my local draft folder, but my writing processes means I have to often slog through those posts to get to the ones I want to post. There are also times I sit and compose drafts without an Internet connection, so being able to find a blogging editor that allows me to compose offline was important.

I finally relented and downloaded MarsEdit, even at the $39.99 price. While its interface obviously isn’t the same as Live Writer, it does provide me with the same functionality. I can, for example:

• Compose blog posts while offline.
• I can format text and posts easily, though the formatting tools in MarsEdit are located in a drop-down menu and not as buttons within the interface.
• I can preview posts before posting, though not with my true blog theme in the background.
• I can easily select categories for my posts or tags.
• I can post either as a draft or as a live post with the click of a button.

My overall assessment of MarsEdit? It is a functional blog editor for those Mac users who, like me, are looking for a way to compose posts offline and don’t particularly care for the online Blogger interface. Obviously, I could compose those posts in a word processor or other text processing tool, but as you know, when you copy and paste that text into the Blogger editor online, sometime very quirky things happen. All in all, I am satisfied with MarsEdit. It is a completely functional blog editor.

MarsEdit Interface

ScribeFire: Easy to Use Blog Editor for Educators

ScribeFire is a simple-to-use blog editor that you can use right within your Chrome, FoxFire or Opera Web browser. So far my testing shows that it works more smoothly than other editors I have used, even Windows Live Writer. Often, when I've used Windows Live Writer, I've lost format selections and media inserts when I posted to the web. ScribeFire has some features that make it much easier to user for administrators who want to wade into blogging. For the educator looking for a way to edit blog posts, ScribeFire is a simple, free blog editor.

Here's an overview of some of its main features:

• Publish to multiple blogs at once: This feature allows you to post an blog entry to multiple blogs at once.
• Edit and update existing posts: It is quite simple to edit and update existing posts using ScribeFire.
• Schedule posts for the future: If you would like to schedule a post to go out at a later time, ScribeFire allows you to schedule those posts.
• Categorize your posts using tags: Using tags to categorize your blog posts is easy within ScribeFire.
• Upload images: This feature works only with images posted on the web.
• Available for Chrome, FireFox, and Opera users: You can use ScribeFire with all three of these browsers.

ScribeFire Screenshot

To check out or download the ScribeFire Chrome extension, check it out in the Chrome Web Store.

The 21st Principal: 2011 Edublog Best Administrator Blog Nomination Thank You

Nominations for the 2011 Edublog Awards are in, and I feel honored that this blog, The 21st Century Principal is among the nominees for Best Administrator Blog.


When I began this blog almost exactly 2 years ago, I was a bit strong on ambition and perhaps a bit weak on just how far I was going to go with blogging. It has been an amazing ride for the past couple of years with all the new connections I've made through both this blog and through Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Blogging has been such an excellent way for this administrator to plug into the global conversation about education, teaching, and technology. I am convinced of its value to me professionally, and I think I am a better educator because of it.

Thanks again for the nomination. I am truly honored to be included in the company of the most connected administrators in the world.